The Executive Committee of the Exeter University Evangelical Christian Union has today (5JAN) issued proceedings in the High Court seeking a Judicial Review of the decision to suspend the Christian Union from the Guild of Students; such acts by the Guild violating the rights of association of religious bodies and representing religious animus. The Court will be asked to quash the decision to suspend. The committee has also instructed Paul Diamond, a leading Civil Rights Barrister to represent them.
The action was taken after the students advised both the Guild and the university authorities that it had failed to support their right as Christians to the freedoms of speech, belief and association.
The 50-year-old Christian Union (CU) at Exeter University is currently suspended from the official list of student societies on campus, has had its Student Union bank account frozen, and has been banned from free use of Student Guild premises, or advertising events within Guild facilities, because the Student Guild claims the CU constitution and activities do not conform to its Equal Opportunties Policies, which have only recently been introduced.
That’s the Christian Union point of view. Here is the Exeter Students’ Guild point of view. It appears what’s wrong with the Christian Union (though there seems to be a side dispute about what it is called) is it expects members to be Christians – and this is written down somewhere.
I find it very difficult to believe that the Student Friends of Palestine welcomes applications from hardcore Zionists, or that the change-ringing group offers opportunities for extended bongo solos, or that their Amnesty branch is really open to those who think the Uzbek government is a bit wishy-washy and needs positive reinforcement in the form of fedexed floral tributesfrom the society to its president in order to hold the line on law-and-order. It is just those bodies have not recorded such obvious facts in their constitutions.
Clubs don’t and shouldn’t appeal to everyone. That’s the whole point of them. They provide social opportunities through giving scope for people to get together with people with whom they know they’ll have something in common. That’s why traditionally they were so much a part of student life, as escape from the non-discriminatory potluck of faculty and accomodation. If Exeter Students’ Guild doesn’t get that, then why is it offering subsidy to societies at all?
Update: A notice that is rather strangely hidden away, but dated the same as the threat of action above, says that privileges have now been ‘restored’. Though nobody seems to have changed their mind about anything, there is to be a “consultation process” instead. Does this mean the Christians are expected to be persuaded not to be Christians? [Is this consultation going to involve lions?] Or is the question being postponed in the hope that it might go away, or that a new set of officers might have a better idea? All very odd.
I suppose that the Atheist Student Union must accept members of the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and even Wiccan faiths…especially if such students wish to pursue leadership positions in the Atheists Student Union.
Mustn’t be exclusive, and all that.
Clearly not enough chemistry between the students!
Best regards
Provocative hypothetical question: Would it be ok to have a White Student Associacion that excluded blacks ? If not why not – if it is a voluntary associacion ?
( I know that the case in question is different, excluding based on religion is not the same as based on race…. but why is one acceptable and the other not ? )
By me, yes. (Though I can’t see why one would want to join one.) By the Students’ Guild, of course not.
Though I note that they do have an Arabsoc, a Chinese Society, and a Malaysian Society, which seem to be targeted at getting together students from those backgrounds (though they don’t explicitly exclude others), I strongly suspect a White Students’ Society would be unlikely to get recognised status, even if it did incorporate the equality policy into its rules, because it would immediately invite suspicions of racism by its name alone.
Perhaps someone reading this at Exeter might like to try the experiment…
Quite so Guy.
“Student Unions” should not be the compulsory entities they are.
If students want to create a “Christian Union” society (or whatever) they should do so by civil interaction (i.e. voluntarily). And this includes paying all the bills themselves (or with money that other people have voluntarily given them).
Many students used to say this (inculding at Exeter) used to agree with all of the above. But such opinions were spread through the Federation of Conservative Students which the Conservative party decided to abolish.
So now students are not exposed to any point of view outside the mainstream “if it is important it should be paid for on a collective basis and be run on the basis of approved rules”.
Of course individual students may still have thoughts that run contrary to the approved way of thought – but each such student will believe themselves to be isolated and will tend to adapt (even in their internal thoughts) to the philosophy of our age.
“But they will find freedom on the internet” – I suspect the chances of this are overestimated (although I am not saying that you overestimate them Guy).
As for beliefs about the moral status homosexual acts (the real reason that Student Unions hate Christian Union societies), I wonder if there is an “Islamic Society” at this college.
Islamic societies tend to have very clear opinions about the moral status of homosexual acts – and yet I have not heard of any Student Unions withdrawing their funding or forbidding their use of rooms in Student Union buildings.
Why is it O.K. for Muslims to “discriminate” (i.e. to choose who they will have as a member of their associations and who they will accept in various posts) but not O.K. for Christians to discriminate?
Don’t dissmiss such possibilities untill you’ve heard the example of the University of Glamorgan’s Afro-Carribean Society which, circa 1998, had a white, blonde, blue eyed, German secretary. She was friends with some of the members and didn’t see it as anything odd at all that she should help out.
I don’t see that the Christian Union has any right to expect or demand support form any other group whatsoever. That is, the students guild should have an equal right to disassociate from people its members find distasteful. Whether this is good thing is a matter for those involved to decide. I would and do disapprove, but its none of by business.
Simon,
The Exeter University Guild of Students, like most student unions, controls access to many of the facilities of the University, which they do not own and which they have not paid for. Moreover they do recieve subscriptions from Christian students along with all the other students at the University (it is, I believe, possible to opt out but I never found out how to do so in my time there).
Were they the owner of these facilities, and were they a voluntary association, I would agree with you. Since they do not, and are not, they are exercising quasi-state power over the student body and should be accountable in the same way as any other state organisation, namely to the principles of liberal democracy.
(Er…that is to say, accountable in the way other state organisation should be accountable, rather than the current situation in the UK.)
Paradoxically of all the 89 societies in Exeter the the CU is probably the one that MOST WANTS TO and MOST ACTIVELY TRIES TO attract members who currently DON’T believe in its tenets (at least that’s what the CU was like at my university).
– of course all societies should be self-funding: self funding societies don’t have to answer to anyone, and this solves neatly the vexed problem of what responsibilities are required of recipients of ‘taxpayers’ student union money
– whether or not to afford societies access to university facilities is theoretically harder, as we can all imagine hypothetically-monstrous societies to whom we’d like to refuse access. In practice I suspect the problem would be moot – one could allow all (legal) societies to use facilities, and if any real problem arises, worry about it case by case.
I see this dispute as an early example of a phenomenon that will become increasingly common: conflict between minority groups armed with misguided laws and precepts that were intended to protect minorities, but instead wil be used by minorites to persecute each other.
Anglicans piss me off.
This is just one more example of the Church of England thinking that general laws/rules should somehow not apply to them.
I take Guy’s point in one sense: clubs are an opportunity for like-minded people to get together–and a Christian Union is presumably an opportunity for Christians (more specifically, Anglicans) to get together. So you would not expect to find radical Muslims (or atheists or presbyterians for that matter) joining the Christian Union in the first place.
But isn’t this all self-selecting or self-enforcing? Why would a Muslim (or atheist or presbyterian) join the CU in the first place? Plausibly, some anti-social anti-Anglicans might join intent on sabotaging the CU’s merry more-tea-vicar antics. But that could easily be dealt with by some rule that trigerred at the point that such sabotage occurred. I bet the rugby club has some rule about bringing the game of rugby into disrepute (or some such) with disciplinary powers up to expulsion from the society. Such a rule is completely non-discriminatory, as would be a suitably crafted rule against acting in a manner incompatible with the goals of the CU society. Is there no half-bright law students in Exeter CU who would explain to them the principles of effective rule-making?
It seems that the discrimination was being done against other Christians. Part 3 of the UCCF Doctrinal Basis, which is the document that members are supposed to sign, says the following:
“The Bible, as originally given, is the inspired and infallible Word of God. It is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour.”
That excludes a lot of people who would consider themselves to be Christian.
Emo Philips has a wonderful skit on Christian sectarianism.
I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said, “Stop! don’t do it!”
“Why shouldn’t I?” he said.
I said, “Well, there’s so much to live for!”
He said, “Like what?”
I said, “Well… are you religious or atheist?”
He said, “Religious.”
I said, “Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?”
He said, “Christian.”
I said, “Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?”
He said, “Protestant.”
I said, “Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?”
He said, “Baptist!”
I said, “Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?”
He said, “Baptist Church of God!”
I said, “Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?”
He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God!”
I said, “Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?”
He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!”
I said, “Die, heretic scum,” and pushed him off.
Eamon Brennan makes a good point. However, is it not also the case that all this secular non-discrimination is now getting out of hand.
It seems that, not only must we allow other people to live their own lives, which most of us have been doing since birth, but we must so positively identify with every other group that we actively support their every whim.
If we are not careful, we will soon all have to belong to every club or religion (the permitted ones that is), partake of the same sexual practices, abuse ourselves with the same (recreational) substances, study exactly the same subjects at school and university (the latter being compulsory until the age of 28), vote for the same political party, and die of the same cause.
Well, I don’t care if the rest of you agree with me: but I do want the right (answrable to no one else) to keep reading your comments, if I so choose.
Best regards
With thanks to An Englishman’s Castle, and somewhat related to this post, I see in The Telegraph School catchment areas to be scrapped. It’s so incredible that, at first, I thought they were both spoofs.
Best regards
After the Christian group the next target will be a Jewish group I am willing to bet. This is someone flexing their muscles to see if they can get away with it.
“After the Christian group the next target will be a Jewish group I am willing to bet. This is someone flexing their muscles to see if they can get away with it.”
No, because the Jewish Society does not ban Jews (or non-Jews for that matter) from its committee and from speaking at meetings. There are seven religious societies at Exeter (including three other Christian societies), and the ECU is the only one which feels the need to break the rules.
The Evangelical Christian Union bans non-evangelical Christians from its committee and from speaking at meetings, but is suing the Guild for the right to call itself the Christian Union.
Why should it be allowed to call itself the Christian Union when it bans Christians from its committee?
This has nothing to do with religious belief and everything to do with correct advertising.
botogol is very right.
My experience of the Nottingham University CU was that every last one of them was as desperate to get notches on their bible as the members of the Mens Hockey Team were to get notches on their bedposts.
Such organisations are by almost by definition proselytising (no Lindsay, they are not Anglican per-se – Christian Unions from my experience are frequently utterly packed to the rafters with evangelicals).
I had some odd experiences with the Notts Uni CU. Some of them were very genuine nice folk, some of them were bonkers in the nut and a very small number were exceptionally nasty control freaks who sought to control the thoughts of others.
But, the thing is if you go to a good University for the right sort of reasons (I think I did – I went to University to find stuff out about the world – in my case this was physics and math) you are going to do a lot of thinking and possibly change quite a bit in your opinions. I always kinda thought that was part of the whole point of the expense and hassle involved in getting a good degree from a good University.
This persecution of the Exeter CU strikes me as a standard leftist idea that people need protecting from themselves. Well, that’s bollocks. The idea that I was smart enough to learn tensor analysis and quantum mechanics but had to be protected from what decisions I might make about my religious beliefs is ridiculous. The Notts Uni CU was riddled with a very weird bunch of US fundys called The Navigators who were frankly creepy. I didn’t react to this bunch of nut-jobs by calling for them to be banned, I reacted by taking very little notice of them.
At one point the Navs were partly responsible for the complete mental collapse of a fellow student. He was a very lonely, quiet lad from Hong Kong who’d got in with the Navs because he was desperately alone and a very long way from home. I saw him go raving mad in front of me in the second year physics lab. I was trying to work out the magnetic susceptibility of something by the Guoy method and he was claiming he’d seen Jesus in the lab. It was disturbing and horrible for me. I can’t even imagine how dreadful the experience was for him. I was second year student rep and I was involved with the decision to repatriate him. I have had some pretty weird experiences in my life and that one is certainly up there.
But, I don’t know quite why he went mad. I suspect the Navs were at least partly to blame but that’s only a suspicion. Even if it is absolutely correct that the Navs drove this poor sod over the edge he had freely associated with them and to have denied him that right would have been to deny him his humanity.
He later got into a Chinese University (physics again) and the last I heard was doing rather well.
I was also going to riff about the idea that the leftists have their knives out against the Exeter CU rather than the Exeter Islamic Union (or whatever they call it) because the left has conflated the totally disparate issues of race, religion and culture into one. I was going to but this has been a long enough post as it is. It should be obvious to all progessives that Christianity is an oppresive patriachal structure and Islam (say) merely consists of people being “culturally authentic”.
Right, enough. I feel a rant coming on.
I’d just like to clarify that societies at Exeter such as Arabsoc aren’t about ‘collecting’ students of the same background. The Arabsoc committee is almost entirely non-Arab, and the majority of members are in fact language students. The society is apolitical and represents no religious views.
I’m glad to hear it, and I note:
My apologies. Though your homepage does have an epigraph from the Quran specifically alluding to the Allah as creator of the universe, which might give atheists like me the opposite impression.
Is that also true of the Malaysian students society? Is there a Malay language faculty?